


a moment of weakness

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (sort of), A LOT of Angst, Angst, Episode Tag, F/M, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Phone Calls & Telephones, and it deals with Daisy's guilt and mental illness, but it's hopeful, post-4x03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 06:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8316919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy just wants to hear a friendly voice.
(Post-4x03)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



She doesn’t know why she expected him to be up there, when she hears the news. 

She already knew Coulson is no longer Director -it’s not like she is spying on them but she needs to be up to date, she needs to know if something happens, something really bad, and they need her, she would know.

When the new Director of SHIELD was presented Daisy wasn’t surprised not to hear his voice on the radio, she knew and still her heart fell a bit. 

After taking her medicine she decides, on a whim (she knows she shouldn’t) to open her laptop and look for a video replay right away, hopeless. just to see what it looks like, SHIELD public again.

Perhaps she is hoping to catch a glimpse after all, thinking maybe Coulson would be there, in the background, behind this new Director who looks a little too perfect and a little too clean, but not in a nice way, not like Coulson looked the first time she met him, crisp suit and no idea how much pain he’d be put through because of Daisy.

She turns it off quickly and sighs audibly. A couple of people passing by notice her in the van. She would normally be careful with something like that and would move her vehicle elsewhere. But today, with the blackout, no one is going to raise an alarm for an unfamiliar van driven by a woman in a bad neighborhood. She is a bit tired and doesn’t want to think about that mundane stuff, those tedious survival skills. Not for a while.

She knows what she wants to do now - seeing this new guy pulling SHIELD out of the shadows has only made her want it more. She thinks about how Coulson is not there - she couldn’t see him - and how he’s probably happier that way, not front center. She knows it’s stupid and dangerous and _unfair_ this sudden want, this want.

It’s the pain in her arm, and the exhaustion, and the words of a teenager who doesn’t know Daisy. It’s just a moment of weakness, she knows. If she waits it out it will go away, like it has gone away (but it has always come back) all the other times she has felt the same weakness. Because that’s all there is, a moment when her resolve falter.

I want to hear your voice  
I want you hear you…

This time Daisy doesn’t let the feeling go away, or it doesn’t do quick enough, and for the first time in almost seven months she gives in.

She is probably as surprised herself as he is when she makes the call.

She almost doesn’t reply when he picks up, from the shock of his voice after so many months. It’s unlike she remembered it. It’s exactly like she remembers it.

She caught him by surprise, completely, picking up casually as if it could be anyone, but when he realizes she’s the one calling Coulson becomes silent as well, as if he is scared words might break the illusion, as if he is not sure the phone call is real at all.

“I just saw your new boss on tv,” Daisy says.

He takes a moment to reply and when they come the words are a little stiff. She wishes she could see his face when he talks.

“Yes, it occurred to me that you might be watching.”

It shocks her, the fact that he would admit so freely to thinking about her when they are apart, the fact that he thinks about her at all.

But I think about you all the time  
I _don’t_ think about you all the time

But of course she would be watching. SHIELD going public again, that’s what Coulson wanted.

“It’s a good thing, Daisy,” Coulson says.

She barely recognizes her name on another person’s voice. Other than YoYo and the Hintons she doesn’t think anyone has said it in months. It’s strange to feel so detached from it so soon, but Daisy is used to shedding names like skin. This one she had wanted to keep, though. Pity.

“I know,” she replies. “And I’m sorry, I guess this is the worst possible moment to have a rogue Inhuman ex-SHIELD agent running around causing problems for everybody.”

“I’m not worried about that.”

Liar, but she appreciates it.

“Are you going to try and trace this call?”

“I wouldn’t think that you’d let me…” Coulson replies in a light tone, appreciative of her skills. Does he know she has been keeping an eye on the team all this time? Does he know and is comforted by the idea? Maybe he thought it was better not to know. He could only imagine it, after all - Daisy made sure not to leave any trace. “No, I’m not going to trace this call.”

“I’m in Los Angeles,” she says, because she’s not really hiding, and because she could always tell by his half-assed efforts more oriented to keep others off her trail than finding her himself, that Coulson wouldn’t try catch up with her if she tells her not to.

“Yes, I know that.”

She frowns. “How much did Mack tell you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you disappointed that I didn’t come back with them?” she asks, careful not to make a mistake here.

“I’m… relieved you could ask Elena for help.”

She freezes. She had worried about Mack finding out about YoYo but she didn’t expect Coulson to be so blunt about knowing it too. Did he say he was relieved? _Relieved_?

“Is she going to get into trouble?”

“No, of course not. She should. But she won’t.”

It’s said in a jokey way but the truth is it takes a weight off Daisy’s shoulders.

Even with YoYo’s powers, even with Daisy hacking into SHIELD to doctor the inventories so there was no official trace of the drugs disappearing, that’s why Mack had looked baffled that they kept running low on the supply. But Daisy knew from the get go that chances were YoYo would get caught one way or another. She has just been holding her breath all this time.

“Thank you,” she tells Coulson, breathing out.

“Of course. No one around here is going to get in trouble for helping you.”

“Is that official SHIELD policy now? Because I don’t _you_ have that kind of power anymore.”

Her joke makes him huff in comic disapproval, pleased at the insubordination. It makes Daisy think of all those times where she joked at disrespecting her new boss, back when she joined up. She guesses she is still joking with him now, even though she has worked hard to accept that it would never happened again.

I had given you up  
And yet here’s your voice with me

“So. What’s he like?” She asks. “The new Director.”

“He’s… I think he’s a good guy. But he needs help.”

And he wants to be the one. The ever so helpful Phil. He could be one of those younger boys in the orphanage Daisy used to pity, because they still didn’t know that no amount of being quiet and being good and cleaning after yourself would secure the love they were looking for.

But Coulson has good instincts, likes to see the good in people, so this new Director must be okay after all.

“You never wanted to be Director, anyway,” Daisy comments.

“I don’t think I ever said that,” he argues.

“Not out loud,” Daisy says. “But I could tell.”

“Yes. You could tell.”

She could always tell. The position made him miserable but Daisy spent a while after she noticed how much he hated it thinking, selfishly, that she couldn’t think of anyone better for the role. 

“Things must be quite different around there, now that SHIELD has gone public.”

“It’s only been public for fifteen minutes.”

“You know what I mean,” she goes on. “The whole way of doing things, it’s going to change. More red tape, I suppose. That’ll be fun. The matter of official funding…”

She trails off, imagining the whole Playground in a buzz of activity, visitors with day passes coming to consult with the new Director. 

Coulson’s gentle voice cuts through her thoughts.

“Are you okay?”

Daisy touches the little Hula figure on the dashboard in front of her. It shakes a bit. How could he ask that? How could she be okay?

“Why do you ask?”

Why does he ask? Why does he keep asking, keep searching, why does Coulson keep being waiting for her?

“You sound strange.”

You can tell too

She knows she is not going to cry. Not here, in semi-public. Not her. She can’t be that weak. Maybe Mary Sue Poots, crying all the time. Maybe Skye, who couldn’t control what happened to her. And maybe as Daisy Johnson she was still too weak, crying when she couldn’t give her life to protect the people she had hurt, when she only took more lives around her, when others sacrificed themselves for her. But not her. Whatever Coulson hears in her voice it won’t be tears, it can’t be tears.

There is a long silence after that.

His silences - that Daisy used to be as fond of as of his voice. A strange change, it makes her nervous when people don’t talk to her, that’s why she needs to fill the silence with her own word. She never felt she had to with Coulson.

Coulson’s silence is full of understanding now.

She didn’t ask for it.

Because she doesn’t deserve it.

“I was afraid that you’d ask me to come back,” she admits.

Outside, the streets are emptying out.

Inside Daisy is picturing Coulson nodding at her words, his gentle eyes getting gentler as he thinks of her loneliness.

“I was thinking that’s probably what you wouldn’t want to hear, when you called,” Coulson tells her.

“A smartass, aren’t you?” she teases, smiling against her will.

Inside her van Daisy pictures Coulson smiling too.

She lifts her feet to the seat, pressing her knees against her chest.

Where are you?

Where is he? Are there other people with him and he has to pretend he is speaking to someone else, that it’s anyone else but the infamous Quake at the phone? Is he in the middle of a very serious meeting about SHIELD’s future? She tries to calculate the difference in timezones and remembers there’s a whole country between them now.

“Sorry, did I interrupt something? Today of all days you must be busy.”

“Not really,” he says casually. Daisy can’t remember the last time Coulson wasn’t terribly busy. She thinks maybe it was that time he made grilled cheese for her. “I was just watching the announcement, having a beer with Mack, Elena and Fitz.”

It hurts to hear that. It’s not just the names that hurt. She can picture it, the common area in the Playground (but that might have changed too, who knows what the new boss has done with the place, Daisy feels her home slipping away from her hands one last inch), her team on the sofa or around the big desk. She can picture Coulson standing a bit behind everybody, watching them as much as he’s watching the news. It makes her feel nostalgic for something that never happened.

“You didn’t have many beers with the team back when you were Director.”

“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry,” he says and for a moment Daisy has no idea what on earth he’s apologizing for and she feels the situation unfair, that Coulson is saying those words to her after all. “I should have had more beers with everybody back then.”

He means while Daisy was there.

You think I’m never coming back  
You think you missed your chance

Daisy wants to tell him that it’s not too late.

“Coulson-”

She realizes she hasn’t said that name out loud in so long. Only inside her head.

But he interrupts her.

“Would it be easier for you to come back if I wasn’t here?” he asks.

Yes, but then what would be the point of coming back.

“Why do you ask that?”

There’s a silence. This one is different. She can tell. She can feel him struggling to choose the words. He’s careful with such things. Words. People are so careless with words. They would just say anything, throw anything at other people’s faces, as if words weren’t the most hurtful things of them all. Meeting Coulson was a relief.

“Because I was the one who let that thing free,” he says.

What a typical you answer  
Only you would think of that

She notices the light is changing, rolling into midday. Normally this would be a good time to figure out where to spend the night. It’s a weird thing having powers, and having the skills she learned at SHIELD. Night falling on the city used to make her nervous. The need to find somewhere to sleep. Even when she was inside her van it wasn’t completely safe. Night used to bring a different kind of solitude just by its threat. Now Daisy knows she doesn’t have to fear the usual. Anyone trying to do her harm - a woman alone at night - she could take them. That’s also lonely, in its own way.

“This isn’t your fault,” she says.

“Are you saying that to me or…?”

Daisy smiles. God she misses him. This is the first time she actually admits the fact of it. Before it was all “I need to stay away”, “they need to be safe from me”, “I can’t come back” without stopping to put into words what this necessity to stay away made her feel. She could see the painting of a red car and know it was a weakness, but she couldn’t admit to the word “miss” until now.

Until your voice

“Smartass,” she repeats.

“Something like that.”

She wonders what they’d be doing if she hadn’t had to leave - she guesses that’s why Coulson asked what he asked, because he believes he set all this in motion, but he’s wrong, it’s her, it was the flaw in her which ruined it all. If she had stayed. They’d be probably talking, even arguing, about the future of SHIELD, what it comes out in favor of Inhumans means. They’d be working together, maybe drinking a beer together, or further down the road having a coffee together as they push themselves too hard, worrying about everything that could go wrong, but side by side.

I’d like that  
Some day

And it’s not enough, to be talking to him, to fantasize like this. It’s not enough, but it’s too much all of the sudden.

“I’m going to have to move the van soon,” she says. “I’ve been here a while and…”

“You can’t risk being spotted, I get it.”

She can tell he’s holding back, not saying what he wants to say - something about her being too much at risk out there. 

“I’m going to have to hang up soon,” she says.

Coulson doesn’t reply at first and Daisy is gripped by one of those sudden, treacherous fears her brain loves to push on her: that Coulson has already hung up, angry or disappointed.

He hasn’t.

“Do you need anything?”He asks her. “You don’t have to steal from us. We could - I could get you whatever you need.”

She knows it’s not a trick for her to make contact.

“I know, but that’d be unfair.” Is she a bad person because she can ask Elena to do this for her but not Coulson? Or is she simply calculating, and aware of the different consequences for each? She doesn’t want to be a bad person, but she doesn’t want to be calculating either. She looks down at her hand, the pain subdued for a while, but not gone. “I can’t put the burden of that decision on you.”

“Daisy.”

I like how you say my name  
(I can’t say that)

“It’s true,” she argues. She can sense his frustration at the other end of the line. Well, she can’t _sense_ it exactly, but she knows him well, and that’s what she has always done, predict patterns.

“Why did you call?” Coulson asks.

Again, for a moment, she thinks he asks because she’s bothering him,because he’s moved on and he has his life and doesn’t need random calls for people who have only brought him pain in his life. For a moment she thinks Coulson is chastising her for wasting his time with this call.

But she knows that’s just her mind and she can’t always trust it. She discussed this once with Andrew - God, _Andrew_ , she could live a dozen lives and not begin to atone for what happened to Andrew because of her - and he told her that no, sometimes people couldn’t trust their own minds. _If I can’t trust my own mind then… what is there left to trust?_ she had asked him in a particularly dark moment. Andrew seemed to think about it for a long time and then he told her: _Sometimes when you can’t trust your own mind you can still trust other people. Not always, but it could help_.

She knows Coulson, she knows he wouldn’t think about her like that. She’s not wasting his time. He wanted her to call. Daisy knows this for a fact. A universal truth, a constant.

“Why did you call me, Daisy?” Coulson repeats, sounding more shaky this time, as if he is pleading with her.

She could just tell the truth, say that she _needed_ to hear a friendly voice, after everything that’s happened. 

But that wouldn’t be the truth, not exactly.

“I called because I wanted to hear your voice.”

It feels easier because they are on opposite edges of the country.

She couldn’t say it to his face.

For a while after this nothing happens.

She wonders if she has embarrassed him.

“You don’t have anything to say about that?” Daisy pushes.

“I have many things to say about that,” Coulson replies. “But I don’t want to say anything that will make you not call me again.”

Careful with words. Careful with the space between words.

She realize what him being so careful means.

“ _Many_ things?” she repeats.

He chuckles a bit.

You sound changed

Daisy regrets it a bit, not being there to see him change. She figures Coulson would feel the same, but she doesn’t feel like she’s changed. For the first time in years she feels completely stuck. Coulson is moving, perhaps forward. Is he moving out of her reach forever? Is she staying behind?

“Daisy?”

She’s become so unaccustomed to her own name in six months - she’ll never get accustomed enough to the way Coulson says it, anyway.

“Yes?” she asks.

A beat on Coulson’s end of the line.

“Please come back home?”

He says it with a sort of self-knowing humor that Daisy appreciates, because it takes the edge off knowing how much he means it anyway.

But it still makes something big and bright catch in her throat when she hears the actual words.

“You promised you wouldn’t ask,” she reproaches him.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “It was just…”

“What?”

“A moment of weakness.”

You haven’t given up...

“It’s okay,” Daisy says, wanting, more than ever, to say many things to Coulson, to hear many things in his voice. She figures there will be more moments of weakness for her as well, in the future. “It’s not a bad thing.”


End file.
